Chapter Text
They’d been waiting for news for what could have been years as easily as it was hours. Nerdanel had little anxiety, for her own sake, but she could feel it radiating off Fëanor in waves. It had been the same for the births of each of their own children, for Celebrimbor, and, though he never would have admitted such, for the children of each of his brothers. She wanted to reassure him, but it would have done no good. Fëanor’s fear wasn’t a rational thing that would respond to words. It was ancient, mere minutes younger that Fëanor himself.
Vána seemed almost as tense as he was, but in her it was far more disconcerting. Petals kept falling in the air around her, though they were inside, and there was nowhere these could have dislodged themselves from. She conjured them from nothing, a manifestation of her fears. Aredhel, who was sitting at her side, kept having to brush petals out of her hair and off of her clothing.
If Nerdanel waited one more second with Vána and Fëanor, she would burst, she would burst. Catching Curufin’s eyes, she stood, and motioned for her son to do the same. Together, they walked out into the clean night air. Standing in tableau under moon and stars, side by side, they were as a pair of Nerdanel’s statues.
It had been a point of some contention, which of Celegorm’s kin would be present on this momentous occasion, but when Oromë had put their foot down and requested only one brother, the choice had been obvious.
“I hate seeing him like this,” Curufin muttered. It was obvious that he was talking about his father. Curufin was too young to have remembered it from any of Nerdanel’s pregnancies, when the terror had ruled him for months at a time. He’d been anxious over Celebrimbor’s birth too, but they hadn’t attended that birth. Nerdanel had worried that, for an expectant mother who wasn’t married to Fëanor, it might have been entirely too much to deal with. In this way, she’d protected Curufin from ever seeing his father in his worst and most vulnerable moment.
“As do I,” Nerdanel agreed, thinking of Fëanor’s hands, shaking in hers lifetimes earlier when they had first felt the stirrings of new life being made between them.
Curufin put his hand on her shoulder. He was muscular from years of work at the forge, and his hands were wide, but very careful. “Of his neurocies, at least this one shows that he means well.”
Not as much as Curufin thought. For every ounce of his action that was motivated purely by love and concern, there were three motivated by fear and hatred of himself. The surety that he had killed his mother. The conviction that it was his blood that had caused it and might again. Even now, he feared that it would kill a Vala.
“And at least it’s gotten less severe with every child,” Nerdanel noted, vowing to maintain a certain positivity in front of her son.
He turned to look at her. “This is less severe? How, by Eru’s will did you ever manage to conceive if he was eight births more nervous than this? No, don’t answer that, I really, really don’t want to know.
“Really only seven. Ambarussa don’t both count in this instance.”
Curufin’s silence gained a pensive character. It was a few breaths before he said, “you know, I’d counted that. My mistake was that I’d added Elrond in as another grandchild.”
Nerdanel didn’t really know what to say to that. It certainly wasn’t a mistake she’d ever made.
Curufin wasn’t always a talker. In his return from death, he’d isolated himself from everyone but Celegorm for years, and only stubborn Gil-galad had really pried him out of it. Now, he was much closer to the broader family, to Aredhel and her son, and even reconciled with Maedhros. But, to Nerdanel’s knowledge, he had little contact with his eldest brothers’ foster son. Fortunately, on the rare occasions Curufin wanted to talk, he had a great deal to say, and his father’s fine words with which to say it.
“It’s remarkable how much he is like them, for one who shares so little blood,” Curufin observed, “certainly, he is more like both of them than Gil-galad is like Maedhros, although that is the better familial claim. The character is easily explicable – Maedhros has ever been good with children, and Maglor’s love for Elrond is all-encompassing – but in my estimation, something about the combination of Eärendil and Elwing also created a child who feels like one of us. If you ever catch him in the right light, he looks uncannily like Maglor. The coloring is just right, and his expressions are always as I expect to see on Maglor.”
Nerdanel hadn’t ever seen the physical resemblence, but she’d certainly felt it. Elves all had a sort of familial signature in their fëar. In general, their family’s was more Fëanor’s than her, because he was so powerful, and indeed the power was the signature. Elrond had that in spades, certainly, and also the careful, professional control over it that Fëanor had dedicated his life to achieving.
“Do you think it might in part be because he thinks of himself as their son? He made himself an elf by wishing it so, why not make himself their son? He is of Lúthien’s line, and so too of Melian’s.”
Curufin shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. Gil-galad doesn’t feel like Círdan or Maedhros, but he really does think of Fingon as his father.”
There really needed to be more evidence in the matter than just one case, but Elros was long dead, and all other half elves had no such parental strife. So their only case studies could be of full-blooded elves, which was far less accurate. “It’s a shame there’s no other evidence.”
“Not no other,” Curufin said, after another long pause, “there is Lómion, and Celebrimbor.”
Lómion was a good example. He had totally rejected one parent. It would not be so difficult to discern if this had had any meaningful impact. But the other... “Celebrimbor?”
Curufin nodded. “He’s the best example, I think. Celebrimbor may look like me, but he doesn’t feel like me. Nor does he feel like Liltallë. He just feels like you.”
To Nerdanel, Celebrimbor had only ever felt like himself. She didn’t really have anything to say to that. She’d helped raise him, after Liltallë had left. Of course she had, and loved him just as fiercely as her own sons, but it had never occurred to her that this would be the impact.
“I’ve never minded,” Curufin added, after a breath, “if you’re worried about that. In Beleriand, it gave me hope that he might be spared from our destiny.”
Nerdanel drew her son to her. It wasn’t just that horrible death would have to be something he feared befalling his son. When her parents had come to Valinor, it had been to prevent their children from experiencing such strife, but Nerdanel had never done anything to save them. She had not even tried.
“I’m sorry it couldn’t save him.” I’m sorry I couldn’t save him.
Curufin stilled, head resting against hers. “I don’t blame you for that. And, for what it’s worth, I think it’s not right of us to say that Celebrimbor needed saving. He needed the mercy of fate, of Námo, but there was nothing any of us could have done that he was not himself. He had the bravery, the wisdom, the strength of spirit, the generosity to survive it. You helped him gain those qualities, and he used them to survive Beleriand, to build something better after it.”
“Celebrimbor would have said he needed saving.” They’d discussed it before.
Curufin snorted. “Of course he would. Celebrimbor still doesn’t understand that from everyone else’s perspective, he’s one of the great heroes of the Noldor. On par with Finrod or Turgon, perhaps. A builder and protector, whose kindness was his only fault. I think Elrond and Gil-galad have almost conveyed to him that making the three was admirable, but if you give it another thousand years, I suspect they will have talked him around to believing that the sum total of his actions made things better rather than worse.
“If I had to summarize every mistake of the first age, and the better part of every other also, in a single word, I would say ‘covetous’. But Celebrimbor was never that. It was your influence that made him otherwise, and I am ever grateful to have the honor of calling one so good my son. “
Nerdanel was grateful that her children were always learning, becoming better. She was grateful that they were forgiving, and being forgiven. But that didn’t mean there had been no virtue in them before, either.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said. “I would not have you think that Celebrimbor did not draw a great part of his character from you. And so too from Celegorm, as it may be.”
Their minds were both drawn back to the present moment. Curufin, slipping away to lean on one of the little garden fences said, “he’ll be a good father. He always was to Celebrimbor. Not that he’s as natural at it as Maedhros, mind, but I don’t think anyone is. No offence.”
No, that was true. Everyone had their gifts, Maedhros’s was that he had an easy way with children, and that children liked him in turn. Compared to the skills most of her family was known for, this was about as harmless as it got.
“I’m happy for them,” Nerdanel actualized, saying it aloud for the first time. “Oromë and Celegorm will be loving, attentive parents, and they will be bringing a child into a world where they will be loved unconditionally by a family of several dozen elves and all the Valar.”
He gave a quirky grin. “And I thought it was bad enough having four older brothers watching my every move.”
“Please, none of them were watching your every move. Maedhros was too busy being madly in love with Fingon, Maglor was too full of existential angst to trouble you, and Celegorm was actively helping you with your schemes.”
“Caranthir,” Curufin noted. “He’s too much of a gossip to let any of us be for long.”
Nerdanel couldn’t help her laugh, which rang out on a breeze that had stirred the still night some. Nearby, crickets chirped. Curufin stopped leaning on the post, but he was still fidgeting, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as he sought to keep his mind occupied. It was still an improvement on staying inside with Fëanor’s anxieties, Vána’s fussing, and Aredhel’s concern, so she let him be.
He kicked at a stray pebble, sending it flying off into the night, and then stopped his foot abruptly as he went to do the same again. “Amya,” he said slowly, “has it occurred to you that we are not alone?”
Her eyes searched the darkness and, now that she’d been told, it was easy to pick them out, the ghostly lines and apparitions in the shapes of many animals, and also of people.
“I believe Lord Oromë requested privacy at this time,” Nerdanel announced to their gathered observers, imagining herself facing some of those who’d hounded them and Celegorm at the first revelation of their relationship.
“Yes,” said one of the maiar, voice deep and gruff. His outline was thin, but Nerdanel thought he was one of the Lord’s hounds. “They did. But He has called us to witness, and so we have come.”
Curufin stilled, and Nerdanel could feel his fear. She understood why. If Eru was calling them to witness, then it might have meant anything, including something terrible. All Fëanor’s fears might finally mean something. Still, it would be cruel of Him to bring strangers to witness their grief.
“How many of you did He call?” She asked.
This maia seemed to speak for all of them, for he was the same again who responded. “All and none of us, Daughter of the Firstborn. I smell your fear, Curufinwë, and I advise you against it. We come not as His darkness. That shall not carry you away tonight, and may not ever. As I said, we bear witness.”
Curufin was looking at the spirit. His eyes narrowed, eyebrows furrowing in consideration. “Huan?” He demanded, but before there was a response, a wave went over the assembled maiar. There was howling, yowling, warlike cries, and then just as suddenly they were gone. The only company that remained were he, Nerdanel, and Varda’s light shining over head. She exhaled, heart pounding in her chest.
Fëanor’s head stuck through the doorway. His smile was wide as Nerdanel had ever seen it, pure relief and wonder.
“Estë says it’s a girl, at least for now. And, well, you’ll have to see the rest for yourself.”
The Healer must have left her patient alone with Vána and Celegorm. She sat beside Aredhel, staring at her own hands in wonder.
“What is it?” Curufin demanded.
She looked up at him, not seeming angry with the disrespect. “Our Lord Father sends a sign, Curufinwë, and names the child. Aistana, she shall be, and of her nature there shall be no question.” She seemed to shake her head to clear it. “A new Vala. These are strange times indeed, and yet I find I do not mislike it.”
After thousands upon thousands of years, a girl. Or, rather, a child-Vala who was a girl, for now. Estë was right about the strangeness of the times, and yet Nerdanel did not mislike them either. She took Fëanor’s hand in her own.
To his mind she said, see, all was well again.
In return, he said to hers, yes, I rather think it will be.